I realize that it has been a year since I last updated this story, and since many people have asked me to continue this story, I feel the need to at the very least inform you of what my plans are. I actually have chapter 11 partially written, but as I was reading over it, I felt that it was rushed and that it didn't take the story in the direction that I want it to go. So in the end I've decided to further postpone adding to the story, and instead take some time to clean up the chapters that I already have. Many people have pointed out flaws they have found or concerns they have with the story, and I feel that these issues need to be addressed before I continue the story. What this means for you, the reader, is that when I am done all of the current chapters will be full length (5000+ words each), and I will have included much more background information about the agencies, and individual characters involved in the plot line, as well as replacing any incidents that involve "writer's convenience" with resolutions that confront the challenges, enhance the plot, and allow the characters an opportunity to show some depth.

A copy of my preliminary draft of chapter 11 follows this message. I realize that this will probably not answer any questions, but rather leave you with more. Honestly, it is no where near complete, the time line in the chapter is jumbled, and ultimately some of the events are completely unrealistic even for this story. The final version of the chapter will, most likely, be almost completely different from this copy. Consider it a gesture of appreciation for all of you who have taken the time to read my story, and give me constructive criticism. As always, your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

Chapter 11:

Mr. Delmas glanced up from his computer screen, as the door to his office swung open to reveal a man in a black suit. Jean-Pierre watched as the man surveyed his office, until his gaze finally settled on the boy who was seated in the chair before him. Something about the man in the doorway bothered him; he couldn't figure out why, but for some reason the man made him uneasy.

"May I help you?"

The man shifted his gaze from Odd to the principal, and approached the desk.

"Yes, I am here to pickup Odd Della Robbia."

Jean-Pierre stared back at the man for a few seconds.

"The police have requested that he remain here in my office until further notice. May I ask why, you wish to move him?"

"I've been requested to bring him to meet his parents. Your presence is also requested." The man retrieved two envelopes from his jacket. He examined the contents of each and then tossed one on the desk and handed the other one to Odd. "The police are no longer in charge of the investigation. Please follow me." The man turned and walked towards the door.

Odd and the principal stood up to follow. Odd looked at the man and asked, "What is your name?"

The man paused in the door and turned to face Odd. "You may call me Will."

As they followed Will across the courtyard towards the trees, Odd cast a final glance at the school and noticed a group of men packing boxes into a cargo van. Curious about what the men were doing, he turned to Will.

"What are they doing?"

Will stopped walking and turned to look for the people to whom Odd was referring. Upon seeing the the van and the men who were loading it. He turned to face Odd. "Oh, them?"

Odd nodded. "Yes, them."

"They're just moving Aelita's belongings. I'm sure that Mr. Delmas here will be glad to have the available room back. Now come on, or we'll be late." Will stated as he turned and walked into the trees. Odd exchanged a sideways glance with Jean-Pierre and the two followed their guide into the trees. A clearing with a man hole in the center came into view and Odd paused. Jean noticed this and stopped to take in their surroundings. Confused he turned to face Will who was sliding the man hole cover open.

"Where exactly are are you taking us?"

"I'll explain when we get there. You want answers, and you'll get them soon enough. If you can't wait, ask Odd. He knows where we're going." With that, Will slid into the sewers, and disappeared from sight. Mr. Delmas turned to find Odd looking at the ground, wearing an expression of shame at being caught.

"What did he mean by that, Odd?"

Odd brushed the question aside and walked towards the manhole. "It's a long story, and I don't want to talk about it." Odd said as he descended the ladder. When he reached the bottom he began following Will. A few seconds later he heard footsteps behind him, and turned see Mr. Delmas following behind them. As they continued the walk in silence, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelope that Will had given him earlier. Noticing that it had no markings on it, he opened the envelope and removed the contents. The top page was a letter of apology and a statement that the police were dropping all charges against him and that the investigation of his involvement in the disappearance of Aelita had concluded. He stuffed the letter back in the envelope and moved onto the second document. Odd stopped in his tracks and stared in disbelief at the sheet of paper he held in his hands.

"What the hell is this?!" Odd shouted as he waved the paper in Will's face.

Will grabbed Odd's wrist and moved the document out of his face. "It is exactly what it says it is."

"But I haven't done half of these things!"

"No-one ever said that you did."

"What do you mean?"

"Read it again, Odd. It isn't just for what you've done in the past, it also includes what you will do."

"Why would I even want to do any of this?"

"It's not a question of what you want. This isn't a game. Lives are at stake, and they always were. We know about LYOKO. You and your friends risked the lives of every person on this planet, you destroyed the property of several countries, and even disrupted a few UN joint missions. You have no idea how much the piece of paper that you hold in your hands has cost this country, and you never will. If I were in your position, I would show a little more gratitude for the generosity that you've been shown. After all, that pardon can always be revoked, and in case you were wondering, an additional copy is stored at UN headquarters." Will turned and resumed walking down the maintenance walkway. "Now hurry up. You've made us late."

Odd sighed and followed behind the man in front of him.

"Why did they have to go to my school?" Jean thought to himself as he followed the two people in front of him.

"When these excited electrons collapse back into a stable orbit they release their excess energy in the form of light or electromagnetic waves. Since each element has a distinct stable electron orbital configuration, individual elements may be uniquely identified by their spectral patterns in much the same way that finger prints may be used to uniquely identify people. Now, who can tell me..." Mrs. Hertz paused in her lecture as the door to classroom opened, and a man in a black suit entered. "May I help you?"

The man surveyed the room, and quickly found his target. "No, thank you. I've already found him." The man proceeded down the center aisle until he was standing beside a boy with brown hair and a green shirt.

"Ulrich Stern?"

"Yes?"

The man held out an envelope for Ulrich. When Ulrich took it, the man turned and began walking towards the door. "Come with me."

Ulrich cast a curios at Mrs. Hertz, who shrugged in response. Ulrich reluctantly stood and followed the man out of the room. Once the door closed behind them, Mrs. Hertz returned her attention to the class. "Where were we? Oh, yes. Who can tell me the stable electron configuration for Neon?"

Ulrich closed the door behind him and walked down the hall slightly behind the agent.

"Where are we going?"

"To meet some people, I'm sure you'll see some familiar faces there, but before we go, I have one more person to pickup. By the way, you can call me Sean."

"Sean, huh?" Ulrich asked as they exited the science building and moved towards the cafeteria. "Who exactly are you talking about?"

Sean stopped, and turned to Ulrich. "Wait here." Before Ulrich could answer, Sean had entered the cafeteria doors, and was looking around at the kids who were happily chatting away. Failing to locate his mark at one of the tables, he shifted his attention to the line of students who were waiting for their lunch. Spotting his target, Sean approached the Japanese girl with black hair.

"Are you Ishiyama Yumi?"

"That depends on who's asking." The girl stated as she examined the man in front of her.

Sean smirked and handed her an envelope. "Follow me." With out waiting for a response, Sean turned and exited the cafeteria.

Ulrich looked up from the message he was reading as he heard the sound of cafeteria door as it opened and closed. When he saw Sean approaching him alone, he stuffed the documents back in the envelope.

"Couldn't find him?"

"Don't worry. Your girlfriend will catch up."

"Wait... What? Why do you need Yumi?"

"Same reason that I need you."

"Hey wait!"

The two turned to face the swiftly approaching girl.

"Ulrich? What's going on?" Yumi asked as she waved the envelope. "How did they find out?"

"A little, pink elf told us." Sean replied.

"Wait... You know where..." Ulrich never finished his sentence.

"Don't say her name." Sean hissed in Ulrich's ear. "There are too many people around." Sean removed his hand from Ulrich's mouth, and released his hold on the boy. "It is imperative that we keep this information contained. Now follow me. We have a schedule to keep." Sean finished.

The man turned and walked off into the trees. The two teens glanced at each other uneasily and then followed Sean into trees. They had questions, and at the moment they simply wanted answers.

Jeremie paused in his walk, and glanced around his surroundings. The edge of the forest that he had first arrived in now lay several miles behind him across the burning sand. He had been walking for hours, and from what he could tell, he was the only person in that miserable world. It definitely was not LYOKO. He hadn't seen even the slightest sign that he could access any part of the system from his current location. He sighed and slumped to ground. "I wish I had a console or someway to access the system's files," he thought to himself. A soft blip reached his ears and he looked up from the sand beneath his feet to the terminal that had suddenly appeared before him. "Well at least I figured out that the computer can read my thoughts." He mused as he began sifting through the data on the screen. "If only there was some way I could get out of here..." He froze as the system displayed a map of the facility and highlighted the location of a room that housed what the system listed as a bidirectional planar quantum state scanner, and energy conversion unit. Intrigued he looked over the facility schematics. Committing the details to memory. "Too bad the materialization program doesn't work..." The screen interrupted his thought with a status window that indicated that the materialization program was indeed off-line, but that the scanner pattern buffers were operating at 100% capacity and that the system was standing by for commands. "Perhaps I should look into this later..."

Jeremie groaned and opened his eyes. Realizing that he was back in the interrogation room, he sat up a faced the man before him. Before he could ask the man any questions, his interrogator for the day began.

"I'm disappointed in you, Mr. Belpois. We've given a you day already and yet you have nothing to show for it. You haven't done a damn thing." The man turned away from Jeremie, and gazed at the mirror across the room from the boy. "Perhaps you've already forgotten our arrangement?" The man smirked as he watched Jeremie's hands clench into fists. "Or maybe you haven't, and you are simply useless. Whatever the case may be, I want you to understand one thing: If you do not perform the tasks that we assign you to complete, we will kill her, and you will die here alone, knowing that you were responsible for her death." The man dropped to his knees and placed a hand on his sidearm moments before the chair that Jeremie had previously occupied slammed into the space his reflection had occupied only a fraction of a second earlier. The man rose to his feet and looked at the boy. "Now. Now. There's no need for that..."

"If anything happens to her, I will destroy this entire facility, and you along with it."

"I'm just a messenger..."

"If I'm really just a hologram, why do have your hand on your weapon."

"What?"

"If I'm really a hologram, firing at me with your sidearm won't stop me. In fact, maybe you mislead me on that account as well. In which case the materialization program works, and you need something else. I guess that the only way that I'll know for certain is to see if I'm right."

"You wouldn't..."

"Hey it's your fault for not giving me the complete picture." Jeremie stated and advanced towards the man.

"Stay where you are." The man stated as he leveled the gun at the boy.

"Or what? You'll kill me. I doubt that." He stated and continued his approach. The man gave no answer, and tightened his grip on the weapon. A metallic click greeted Jeremie's ears, and he lunged for the man's hang gun. On reflex the man fired, but recoiled in fear when his shots had no affect. After a brief struggle, Jeremie overwhelmed the man and retrieved that gun. Gun in hand, He walked over to the door but found that it was locked. Undeterred, he turned to the one-way mirror and fired. The glass shattered, and Jeremie stepped through into an empty observation room. He located the door and exited into a corridor. Keeping the gun in hand, he proceeded quickly down the hall in search of the assembly area which the system schematics had indicated contained a scanner room.

"Welcome to the Hermitage," Will stated as he emerged from the sewers into the midday sun. He glanced at his watch, and continued towards the front steps, "and it appears that we are fashionably late." Will stopped at the door, and knocked.

"Why are you knocking on the door of an abandoned house?" Odd questioned the man. The sound of footsteps approaching the door reached the ears, followed by the clack of a lock sliding open.

"Who ever said it was empty?" Will countered, as the the door swung open to reveal a woman with pink hair and blue eyes.

"Oh. Hello, Will. I see you brought them." The woman turned to look at Odd. "You must be Odd."

Odd's face twisted into a look of confusion. "Um, do I know you?"

"No, this is the first time we've met." She turned back to Will. "Come inside. Christophe is waiting for you in the office."

At the sound of the sewer entrance opening, the four turned their gaze to look at the new arrivals.

"Yumi?! Ulrich?!" Odd called to his friends.

"Odd?!" The two called back. "What's going on?"

"Not now, we'll explain inside." Sean ordered as he led the two up the stairs. "We're wasting valuable time. Time your friend doesn't have." Without saying anymore Sean walked past them and entered the house. The three friends glanced at each other and then followed behind Will and Mr. Delmas as they entered the house.

"Three hundred meters then left... Three hundred meters..." Jeremie whipped around a corner and past some startled personnel. "Thirty-seven meters then right.... thirty seven meters..." Jeremie stopped in his tracks and examined the massive doors that stood before him. "This looks like the right place," he muttered and rushed inside as the doors slid open at his presence. He stopped as the doors slid shut behind him and surveyed the fifty thousand square meter room. "Now if I were going to..." Jeremie froze halfway through his thought and gawked at the far wall of the room. "It can't be real. That technology isn't viable yet, and the scanner technology definitely doesn't work on that large of a scale." He muttered as he approached the three meter high by thirty meter wide free standing frame that supported a faintly glowing sheet of plasma. He stopped in front of the structure and then examined it in detail as he slowly circled around it. A stack of papers lying next to a computer terminal attracted his attention, and he walked over. After a quick glance at the papers, he tossed it back on the desk. "Why is everything in English around here?" He wondered out loud as he walked back to scanner. "I wonder how it works." He mused and looked around the room. Spotting a nearby chair, he grabbed it and moved it over to what looked like the front of the device. "I wonder..." He grabbed the chair with both hands and flung it into the sheet of the plasma. He watched in disbelief as the chair disappeared from sight while it sailed through the scanner. "Well that's different..." Jeremie never got to finish the thought, as a klaxon started up, and an announcement came over the PA system.

"Unauthorized gateway usage on level 4. All available security personnel please proceed to room A4379."

He didn't have to understand English to realize that he was out of time. The room number at the end of the message had told him all he needed to know. He turned and began running towards the door adjacent to the computer terminal. Just as he was reaching out to grab the handle, he watched in horror as his hands disintegrated and the rest of his body quickly followed until his vision was swallowed by darkness.

"Since then we've been trying to locate Jeremie but we haven't been successful." Aelita stopped and turned away from her friends, to hide the tears that were threatening to fall. Christophe stood and continued the presentation.

"This is where the three of you come into the picture. Since you all have previous knowledge of this otherwise classified material, you along with a team assembled by the UN security council will be assisting Aelita in her search. You will be visiting all of the facilities that are owned, operated, and/or utilized by all of the governments and corporations involved in the Initiative for Point-to-Point Over Ethernet Transport, more commonly referred to as PPOET. The are dozens of research facilities and outposts scattered across various countries and continents. In addition to searching for your friend, you will be conducting a complete search and examination of every facility on this list. You will report your findings directly to the members of the UN security council after every trip, and you will be required to answer any and all questions they may have. At each facility you will have unrestricted access. If anyone attempts to convince you otherwise or denies you access, your team is authorized to use any means necessary to obtain entrance to the restricted areas. All of the agencies and companies involved have been informed of this as well. The travel arrangements and the itinerary are still being finalized. In the meantime you will all continue to attend school at Kadic, and you will be informed when the mission is prepared to start. You are not to discuss any of this information with anyone outside of this room who is not a member of the team or a member of the UN security council. Mr. Delmas's involvement in this matter ends here. Any questions?"

Christophe finished and surveyed the expressions on the faces of the teens. Odd took the opportunity and raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"How did you convince the UN to do this?"

"I didn't. They convinced themselves. I had to give them every piece of classified information that we had on Project Carthage along with all of our joint research on PPOET. After they were done reading through it all, they decided that their respective countries all stood to gain more from this than ours. The PPOET charter also stated that the research facilities would be open to periodic UN inspection. They didn't have much choice, but I didn't expect them to give your team the authority that they did. I came away with the feeling that they've had suspicions about PPOET for some time now."

Odd nodded absentmindedly and looked down at his feet. Yumi took her chance and spoke up.

"What about Aelita?"

"Her alias 'Aelita Stones' is dead. Aelita has been issued an amended birth certificate, and she is now known as Aelita Schaeffer once again. She is now legally fifteen years old. Anyone else have any questions?"

Christophe glanced around the room.

"Alright, then I'll be on my way. Aelita is in charge now, and you are to follow her orders."

Christophe turned and exited the room with Will and Sean a short distance behind him. Jean-Pierre rose to his feet as well.

"I'll see you all at the school. Don't be late for your classes."

With that he left through the same door that the other men had taken. Aelita turned to face her friends. After a brief glance towards the door, she turned and walked towards it.

"Come on, we're going to be late." Aelita murmured softly as she disappeared from view. After sharing a confused glance with each other, her friends followed her towards the front door.